A belated congratulations to Jeffrey Vedanayagam from the Garrigan Lab who successfully defended his dissertation about “Evolutionary genomics of piRNA mediated transposon silencing in Drosophila”. Jeffrey will be heading to Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to begin a post-doc in Eric Lai’s Lab.

Congratulations to the 2015 Department of Biology retreat award winners:

“Team Cara” poses with the Golden Pipette

Golden Pipette Award: Sophea Chhim, Adil Khan, Chuck Hutti, Cara Brand (EEB), Jovany Martinez (pictured left to right).

Poster competition: Emerson Khost (EEB) and Matthew Johnson (CDM)

Spirit Award: Cara Brand (EEB), Vince Martinson (EEB), Jingyuan Zhang, Tian Zhang

Emerson Khost, EEB poster contest winner

If anyone is looking for a postdoctoral research position, check out this interesting research at Penn State:

The Baums lab at The Pennsylvania State University is looking for a postdoc to work on coral hybridization genomics, funded by the National Science Foundation. The only widely accepted coral hybrid system consists of the once dominant but now threatened Caribbean species, Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata. In the past, hybrid colonies originating from natural crosses between elkhorn and staghorn corals were rare, and evidence of hybrid reproduction was limited to infrequent matings with the staghorn coral. Recent field observations suggest that the hybrid is increasing and its ecological role is changing throughout the Caribbean. These hybrids appear to be less affected by the disease that led to the mass mortality of their parental species in recent decades. Research will address how the increase in hybridization and perhaps subsequent introgression will affect the current ecological role and the future evolutionary trajectory of Caribbean acroporids.

If interested, apply here!